Calls for external inquiry into Bristol City Council monitoring of critics
Staff have been accused of spying on parents critical of the city's special educational needs provision
Bristol City Council is facing mounting pressure to hold an external inquiry into its staff monitoring the social media of parents with disabled children.
A newly published internal report has cleared the council of wrongdoing, after concerns were raised about council workers collating a dossier of parents who criticised special educational needs and disability (SEND) provision in Bristol.
But the report has already been slammed by councillors and parents as the “bureaucracy marking its own homework”.
The social media monitoring was revealed after council emails were leaked in July, leading to calls for an external inquiry.
But council chiefs asked for time to first establish the facts themselves, leading to the new report which was published on Friday, September 2.
The 10-page report, written by the council’s legal department, shows staff were concerned about a perceived conflict of interest among two unnamed parents involved in running the Bristol Parent Carer Forum, who were also allegedly criticising SEND provision on social media.
The charity, which represents SEND parents, will now likely see its funding scrapped.
The report said: “All information collated was publicly available and we have not seen any evidence or suggestion that this wasn’t the case.
"There can be no reasonable expectation of privacy when personal information is being voluntarily put into the public domain by the person to whom that data relates.
"There is no evidence that systematic monitoring took place.
"The collation of social media content was done for the specific purpose of evidencing the conflict of interest.”
Council staff were concerned about how the charity was run and that it was unrepresentative of the city’s parents and carers.
Staff also criticised a perceived conflict of interest among parents running the charity and their “campaigning activity”.
Sources suggest this relates to a private Facebook group helping parents get education health and care plans, a hard-to-obtain crucial document needed to get proper support for pupils with special needs.
The report said: “One of the concerns was the possibility that Data Subject One was the owner of Twitter Account A, which contained numerous posts that were critical of the SEND team and provision.
"There was ongoing concern that the campaigning undertaken was in conflict with her role as a parent representative with Bristol Parent Carer Forum.
"To corroborate concerns raised by Bristol City Council, Officer C contacted Officer E to request that evidence of social media posting be gathered.”
Four council staff appear to have worked on collecting critical social media posts to use as evidence against the two parents involved with the charity.
According to the internal report, this took “not a significant amount of time” in October last year and April and May this year.
Other concerns raised by council staff include one parent allegedly sharing confidential information, and the other parent launching surveys without first consulting the council.
These surveys included questions, the report claimed, which appeared to invite negative responses.
This included: “Has the child you care for been discriminated against, received a full-time education, or experienced any type of exclusion?”
The charity was hoping to gather feedback from parents on whether the council had made any progress on the five areas which Ofsted inspectors said needed improvement, ahead of an upcoming reinspection.
Concerns about the conflict of interest led council chiefs to pull their support for funding for the Bristol Parent Carer Forum.
The charity received funding from the Department of Education, as well as extra money from the council and the local NHS clinical commissioning group.
The council said it wanted to instead focus on reaching underrepresented families, including black, Asian and minority ethnic families and those with English as a second language.
A Bristol Parent Carer Forum spokesperson said: “We feel saddened that we’re facing further unfounded allegations, and we feel that our focus should be on working with our partners to address the SEND crisis.
"We remain committed to supporting the SEND community in Bristol in a bid to repair the fractured relationship between parents and carers and the council.”
The charity said it wrote to the council in October last year, denying claims that anybody had broken any policies or rules.
The spokesperson added that “personal social media activities, individual freedom of information requests, and personal judicial review actions, are all individual rights which are out of the remit of Bristol Parent Carer Forum to control”.
But now council chiefs are facing further calls for an external inquiry into the social media monitoring.
Next week councillors will vote on a motion calling on Bristol mayor Marvin Rees to hold a “genuinely independent inquiry”, at a full council meeting on Tuesday, September 13.
The motion raises fears that the internal report was the “bureaucracy marking its own homework”.
Local parents of children with SEND have also added their voices to the calls for an inquiry.
Conservative Councillor Graham Morris, who tabled the golden motion, said: “I found this revelation about data harvesting by officialdom to be deeply disturbing and profoundly provocative.
"This sort of activity can only destroy the confidence of parents with vulnerable children.
"I don’t feel that many people will have any confidence in the rigour, findings or conclusions drawn from the internal investigation.”
Jen Smith, a mother of two children with SEND, tweeted: “I recognised I was one of the people spied on.
"The scale of what’s going on in Bristol is huge and we’re not getting honest answers.
"There are concerns the council has infiltrated a closed Bristol SEND support group.
"How low can you be to monitor the private online spaces of desperate families needing help?
"We want an independent investigation and access to all the private data the council has collected as an urgent priority.”
Bristol has long faced problems with its SEND provision, with parents reportedly often waiting a year for education and health plans, which by law should only take up to 20 weeks.
In 2018, parents took the council to court after budget cuts to SEND schools; and in 2019 Ofsted inspectors said the city was failing in five key areas of its “disturbingly poor” SEND provision.